MANILA, Philippines – Turning a parcel of rainforest into a protected critical habitat is tough work.
But Filipina-Australian conservationist KM Reyes is not one to shy from weekslong expeditions trekking the jungles of Palawan or the intricate maze of endless lobbying essential to making protected areas.
“We spent four years of hiking in and out of that rainforest and lobbying to every level of government all the way to Manila to region to province to munisipyo (town) to barangay,” Reyes told Rappler in an interview, sharing the process behind their work at Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat.
Reyes is the executive director of Centre for Sustainability, a nonprofit conservation group based in Puerto Princesa, Palawan.
She co-founded the group with Palaweños Jessa Garibay-Yayen and Solomon Calogo. Calogo is a Cuyunon, an ethnic group from Cuyo Islands and the northern and central parts of Palawan.
“Our mission is to conserve land and protect the Philippines’ last remaining forests through legal establishment of protected areas,” the group’s description reads.
The group’s first successful undertaking was Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat, measuring 41,350 hectares in the highest mountain in Puerto Princesa. It is the ancestral domain of the Batak tribe.
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According to Reyes, they started research and lobbying in 2014 until the official resolution declaring it a critical habitat came out in 2017.
Critical habitats are places outside protected areas where threatened species are found, according to the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection law. Killing, destroying, and trading of wildlife are considered illegal under this law.
Declaring an area a critical habitat meant authorities took into account species endemicity and the presence of human threats to survival of wildlife.
Following the success in Cleopatra’s Needle, the group turned their sights to another site in southern Palawan: the Kensad forest cover of the Victoria-Anepahan Mountain Range.
“The lobbying is obviously something that happens throughout the process,” she said. “It happens in the community organizing and the scientific research and the political lobbying.”
The mountain range sits between two nationally protected areas: the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park and Mt. Mantalingahan.
The Kensad forest cover is home to critically endangered species like the Philippine pangolin, Philippine cockatoo, Curran’s pitogo, and Fowlie’s Paphiopedilum. One of the hikes in the Victoria-Anepahan Mountain Range is Sultan Peak.
Laying the groundwork for this new project means more expeditions in wild spaces, and collecting and documenting biodiversity data with scientists and storytellers.
Clik here to view.
“We’ll obviously start very early in the morning, and then we’ll travel down to Narra normally on our motorcycles,” said Reyes. “It’s the most common way to get down there.”
She would usually take a 20-liter dry bag on these trips as she had done in the past years. Born to Filipino parents and raised in Australia, Reyes traveled to Latin America, North Africa, and Europe, engaging in peacebuilding efforts and development work.
In 2011, Reyes settled in Palawan.
She said she’d always intended to “discover my roots in the Philippines” and extend her conservation work in the country.
Another factor is the strong environmental movement in Palawan. It is home to many indigenous communities. Priority in this work is getting their consent, said Reyes. Are they really interested in protecting their area?
She recalled their work in Cleopatra’s Needle, at an “11th-hour meeting” where they were seeking the consent of the tribal council. It took a female councilor to convince a room full of men. She stood up, said Reyes, and gave an incredible intervention.
But why would anyone oppose turning a rainforest into a protected area? In Palawan, Reyes explained, rainforests thrive on indigenous culture and legacy.
“Many of these indigenous communities do get — and rightfully so — really scared of the idea that once their area becomes protected, they can’t enter anymore,” said Reyes.
“They’ve been safeguarding these areas since time immemorial. It’s because of them we still have forests.”
It might be a tedious effort, marking delineations on swathes of rainforests and declaring certain areas critical habitats — an undertaking designed more for human understanding than the boundless, uninterrupted growth and decay of the natural world.
But one doesn’t have to stare at Palawan’s beauty for too long to understand why some people choose to go through this effort.
A glance is all it takes: the sunlight seeping from the canopy of old-growth trees, the dense pack of stars visible on a clear night, the tiny flat-headed frog lurking in the swiftly moving stream.
Years of doing this and the outdoors continue to spark awe in Reyes. – Rappler.com
Some quotes translated to English for brevity.